One Last Gamble
by MysticMew
Summary: Just a little, angsty insight on Minako’s tangled love “life”.rn(one-sided) MinakoUsagi, (implied, one-sided) HotaruMinako


Title: One Last Gamble

Status: Alpha

Author: Matthias aka Mystic Mew

Email: Minarugmx.de

(Plot) Beta-reader: Ayrki

Rating: PG(-13)

Category: Angst, Drama (can't really call it Romance, really)

Fandoms: Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon

Main Pairings: One-sided Minako/Usagi, one-sided Hotaru/Minako

Timeline/Spoilers: None really. Set after the anime/manga (not even that is really specified)

Summary: Just a little, angsty insight on Minako's tangled love "life".

Distribution: MSD (http:www.catstrio.de), Starsinlove-group ), ), Mediaminer ), ASMR ), Shoujo ). Anyone else, you can have it but please ask first, 'kay?

Disclaimer: Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko-sama, Kodansha and grudgingly admits Toei.

Story Disclaimer: One Last Gamble©16.01.2005 by Matthias Engel

Legal Disclaimer: This story features relationship topics between two girls. If you don't like it or it is illegal where you are, consider yourselves warned, I'll take no responsibility for your health.

One Last Gamble

By Matthias Engel aka MysticMew

I was a very good observer.

If I wanted to pride myself with any special skills acquired throughout the years – or millennia – it was my perception ability. An ability vital to both my occupation as well as the role assigned to me in it. Especially in the midst of a battle, a sharp mind that could pick up tiny details seemingly unimportant and to process them all to form a plan of action on the fly, not based on long calculations but instinct alone, such a mindset was very helpful.

And yet, I sometimes really hated it when it was involuntarily applied to social, non-crisis circumstances. I knew a lot of things that went on around me. About some of the little, mostly harmless, secrets kept, what bugged one of them. I HAD TO know this sort of thing. I was their leader after all, and a leader who did not know about these things and thus could not include this knowledge in decisions was going to fail fast and hard, usually dragging down those that he or she was supposed to lead.

I hid it well, of course, under a mask of cheerful, bubbly happiness, not a care in the world, a mask that had taken long to construct and even longer to master. Once so easy, once a natural state, before Artemis, before my awakening, before my true self emerged. Just a happy, little, normal schoolgirl. A bit boy-crazy and not all too good in school unless it came down to PE and a few other things. A lie. I knew. But a lie I sometimes longed to return to, just for the sake of breaking out from the path of melancholy my life had taken, once again. It would have been so much easier to be blissfully unaware, then knowing the bitter, frustrating truth.

The party had not at all "winded down", just merely entered its "let's all have our fun together" instead of "we are here to celebrate insert name 's birthday". Not the cluster around one person, the actual focus of the evening, anymore. Now there were the familiar groups clustered together, sometimes straying to interact, mostly keeping to themselves. Not because there was any resentment in spending time with someone else but simply because that was how it was. Haruka and Michiru, Ami and Makoto subtly moving towards each other – not so subtly for me, mind you. Rei was keeping a little to herself, just as Setsuna was, both occasionally joining their respective circle, just as I would usually. And of course there was THEM.

I had seen her slipping away almost instantly, standing a little to the side of the bustling activity. No one noticed. They usually didn't. I wondered if any of us truly understood her in the first place, what was really going on inside the young child-adult whose birthday we were celebrating today. Heck, no one had really bothered to even ask her how old she was now. It could have been answered in at least three different ways, with three different results. I was certain of that.

She didn't like big, noisy events like that. That much I had been able to piece together. Not that she totally disapproved but she was the quiet type and preferred that quiet which wasn't all too surprising seeing as she was the Senshi of SILENCE. Hotaru was a rather private person, even after her rebirth, the typical domination by her alter ego that neither of us could really deny was there, even if we tried denying it often enough, clinging to the notion that our Senshi selves were the secret identity, not our everyday selves.

And so, unnoticed as always, she slipped out of the room. But not before glancing up for a moment, purple eyes locking with my own, KNOWING that I was watching, and making me flinch from the emotions playing inside them for just a fleeting moment. Then she was gone, leaving the laughing and joking rest of the group behind to enjoy themselves, to enjoy their private time, mostly with their loved one.

Which was the real problem here. A problem that I couldn't just SOLVE, because I doubted there was a SOLUTION. Maybe there wasn't even meant to be one. As saddening as that sounded.

I cursed myself for turning my gaze away from the empty doorway, back to the room full of quiet talking, excited laughter, happy smiles, enjoyment, affection… love. Back to them, at the center of it all, back to HER. It was visible hard to keep the mask in place, it became harder and harder over time, and frankly I wasn't deluding myself in believing that it was good enough anymore. Little by little the mask had crumbled away. Some like Setsuna noticed, I think. Some just wondered over the change but didn't make the connection, would probably balk at the connection. The carefree, bubbly party girl was still there but these days I was more often Venus, leader of the Senshi, not finding the strength any longer to keep up the charade, not caring whether or not someone SAW.

There she was, smiling, absorbed in her prince, her beloved, happy as she should be, practically glowing. A glow that was like a sun, almost painful to look at. And just like the sun that you couldn't look at directly without going blind, she appeared to me, always a little brighter, a little less unreachable she seemed to me. Our Princess, our hope, our savior…

My eternal, ONE-SIDED love.

CHIBA Tsukino Usagi. Princess Serenity, wife of Prince Endymion.

Unreachable forever.

I wasn't dating anymore. I haven't even tried since our return from the cauldron. I just couldn't find the energy anymore to continue the pretense, the false but SAFE image of boy-crazy Minako who couldn't manage one stable relationship. That had been better than showing the real reason, much better, much safer. It made the pain bearable, even if just by a little. I could delude others into thinking that I simply didn't have any luck in the dating apartment, I could delude myself into thinking that… for a while.

Then there was the wedding, the happy, joyous occasion signaling the beginning of a new era, of the impending revival of old and renewed glory. I had smiled happily throughout it all, standing right next to my secret and only love, giving her the ring that would bind her to another. Another that made her happy, happier than I ever could. And for that I WAS happy.

That didn't stop the pain though. The heartache I knew could never be cured. I might be selfless to a point, but not to an extreme where I refused to acknowledge what it did to me. I sometimes think she knew, suspected. Serenity knew, or at least I was pretty certain about it. However, what could she do? Nothing. You can't force love after all, and her heart had already been given to another. End of the story. Who says they always have to have a happy ending? For everyone involved I mean?

But, the kami help me, how much I wished there would be one.

Sharply I tore my gaze away. It had just lasted a couple of seconds but like always seemed to be an eternity. I didn't need her catching me. I didn't need to see the confusion and worry or even worse, the pity in these sparkling blue eyes. She was happy as it was. And as much as this situation hurt, I'd rather die a thousand deaths inside than taking that away from her. She was too precious for me.

This couldn't continue as it was anyway. The situation had become unbearable for some time now. And ironically it hadn't been Usagi who had brought it to the boiling point, to a point where I KNEW I had to do SOMETHING about this. No, it wasn't the bright light of our and especially my life. The light that we were all drawn to and that I could have easily lost myself in if it had been all there was to it. No, it hadn't been Usagi.

I glanced back at the empty doorway through which Hotaru had vanished moments ago. Like her namesake, a firefly scared away by the bright light, tiny in comparison, fleeing to somewhere where her glow could actually be seen.

It was a miracle I hadn't even noticed. A miracle or a curse. I wasn't entirely sure about that. I had no clue when it started. It was there though and I couldn't deny it, could not NOT understand what it was because the situation was so painfully similar… no, scratch that, it was painfully identical, catching me somewhere in between and upon the realization leaving me with no clue what to do about it. The one impossibility in front, the other behind me, forming a string of pain and heartache with only Usagi finding any real happiness, ironically outside of the string itself.

I had really thought I was strong enough. That I could just submit to this. Always silent, always in the background, watching, loving, but not touching for the fear, no, the very close reality of burning my fingers. I believed I could have been happy for her, I believed it would be alright, that I could love without needing to be loved back.

Until I started watching… observing Hotaru. Lurking in the shadows, her light like a single star trying to even see her companion within the bright glare of a super nova. Just like me. A mirror of the same loneliness, the same suppressed, silent longing. Expressed differently since we were radical different people but nonetheless the same basic principle. And just like Usagi, I couldn't just "make it right", I couldn't just turn around one hundred and eighty degree and "make it right". Oh, that would be easy. I could probably delude myself again for awhile that it was better, that I could be happy for a change with someone else. An easy solution, one I could justify with at least doing Hotaru some good.

A lie again, though. A lie to myself, and to her as well. It wouldn't be honest, it wouldn't work out in the end and just produce more pain, more unseen tears at night, more desperate longing that could never be answered. I couldn't just decide to love someone. It didn't work like that. Sure, I was flattered, maybe even curious. But hell, I barely knew Hotaru. As I mentioned earlier, I doubted any of us really KNEW her, not even her self-appointed parents who were barely older mentally IF you ignored her alter ego. I couldn't just snap my fingers and create feelings for her.

Nevertheless…

Something had to be done.

Something had to change.

And it had to change NOW. Crystal Tokyo wasn't far away and if something _good_ had come out of noticing Hotaru's affection towards me, it was that I couldn't hide, couldn't run anymore from the fact that, continuing the way I had, would, no, was already affecting my judgment. I was their leader, SHE trusted me. I knew, I felt it deep down in my heart, that I would be doing something incredible foolish one day if I didn't get a grip on this. I had to do SOMETHING because continuing to do NOTHING would end up disastrous for sure.

I glanced down at the tickets in my hands that I had unconsciously pulled out of my bag, and then up again, at the open doorway, bouncing back to the royal couple now dancing and returning to the hallway.

I had always been good at relying on my gut, my instincts. In life, as well as in battle. Intuition was my greatest strength. Oh sure, they had hammered battle strategies into my mind during my past life until I could recite them in my sleep, however, in the end they would wind up bend and altered as the situation required them… if I used them at all. I never really knew that what I decided to do, would be successful. Yet, I believed, and it usually turned out all right, especially when it really mattered.

And just like that, I had no freaking idea if this would work. Like I said, logically seen I couldn't just force myself to change overnight. To drop my love for one and turn to another. And I had no delusions that this would happen. IF, then only slow, agonizingly slow, a path traveled that was going upwards and upwards and upwards, like swimming against the current and not ever considering to turn back, because every time you did it would push you even further towards the waterfall at the end. A path I had to take simply because falling back again was no option.

Closing my eyes, I hid a tear and turned away. I would always love her. Even if somehow I could manage to pull this off, my feelings would always be there, feelings that couldn't just be terminated.

Yet, I resolved with a FINAL glance at my too bright light, the intoxicating, unreachable object of my heart for many years, over two lifetimes, I knew I had to go. I had to say goodbye. For a new beginning, there first had to be an ending. And achieving that end could not, would NEVER happen when I stayed in HER close proximity. And even resisting that pull, separating from it by sheer willpower, it would not guarantee immunity the moment I returned, not even immunity while I was away. I could only try. I needed to try.

One last, desperate gamble. One last crazy attempt at dating from Aino Minako. Except this time I vowed that it would be a honest one.

With that resolution, made up that very moment – even though it had been on my mind for several weeks now, being the reasons for the ticketS – I squared my shoulders, gaze fixed ahead, not daring to look back, I walked out of the door, following the pale light of the firefly unnoticed in the glare of the other, far dominant one.

I could only hope this worked out. And I could only hope that she would be willing to even go along with this crazy idea, seemingly condemned to fail from the very start. Ironic, wasn't it? It had been Usagi who was the very incarnation of hope and yet here I had turn away from just that, in order to find another kind of hope. One that wouldn't swallow me, that wouldn't burn me. Another path, another softer kind of light.

_Artemis will freak when he finds out_, I thought to myself with a bittersweet smile as I slipped out into the night where she sat as if waiting just for me. Maybe she was. I'd find out soon.

THE END

Author's Notes

author glances at Maia (muse) shakes head and walks off, muttering under his breath I will not comment, I will not comment, I will not…

Maia just looks after him with a smug, self-satisfied expression and a maniacal glint in her eyes


End file.
